I wanted to post this earlier, but I've been rebuilding my website after it gathered a horrendous virus. I just completed a bunch of fantasy commissions and they are compiled into one of LPJ Design's Storn Cook Portfolios, number 25 to be exact! So, if you are looking for good resolutions of my artwork for clip art, look no further! Link here:

Storn Cook Portfolio # 25

Here are couple of samples from Portfolio #25 (and you can see all of the art of any of the portfolios before purchase, no blind buys, over at RPGnow). Kind of a strange selection because I was asked for THREE sitting poses. I rarely get asked to do single figure commissions with specifically sitting situations. Fun!

Also, check out my new banner art for my website, you can see it up top on my web/art/blog/site. And put here for showing off sake:

This reminds me of the Fraal Coptic/Orthodox Chaplain in our d20 Future campaign (a mixmash of d20 future settings, Star Frontiers and 2300ad)... his 3D holo-recording of the Sermon on the Mount having caused him to convert was something that ended up being part of the campaign. I just wish we could have finished that adventure. We never figured out whom tried to kill him to get the recording crystal!

American Patriot (MSG Nathaniel Hale Spaight, US Army - Ret.), American Meta-Human Super-Soldier (PL10/150pp.)"Sometimes... success is measured just one little victory at a time."

This reminds me of the Fraal Coptic/Orthodox Chaplain in our d20 Future campaign (a mixmash of d20 future settings, Star Frontiers and 2300ad)... his 3D holo-recording of the Sermon on the Mount having caused him to convert was something that ended up being part of the campaign. I just wish we could have finished that adventure. We never figured out whom tried to kill him to get the recording crystal!

Awesome! Glad it evoked something personal to your gaming!

Well, my site caught hacked again, after I wiped out everything. So, I went to Securi, spent the money and had them clean the site and together, a bit more security (hopefully) was put into place.

Meanwhile, I've been getting artwork done. Here are a few pieces! Here are one from Paul L., his last of his oddball religious illos he had me do. And the Decathelete (my title) for Death Tribble as a new take on the "weaponmaster" archtype on super-hero/villain.

Working a lot with toned paper on these, doing both pencil to darken, and white acrylic for highlights. Then working with multiply, normal and color overlay levels in Photoshop and Manga Studio. I'm kinda digging it.

Paul C is one interesting patron. He has me do the usual single figure commissions for his fantasy game. But then he turns it up a notch and gives me these scenes to do with the previously done characters. And I get to do ACTION! I like doing action. A lot. These are a lot of work, but boy, both of these were SOO much fun to do. Getting to do monsters, neat locales and heroes in motion.

You know you are having fun when working late at night and your wife calls you to watch something and you can't tear yourself away. I hope that comes across

. Don't get me wrong, I like introspective scenes, single figures, landscapes...heck, I like doing pretty much all art. When I haven't done black and white brush/ink work in awhile, it is really nice to come back to that medium... or if I've been doing a lot of digital, it is nice to pick up an actual paint brush.

Both of these are digital, but the Black Dragon one was done over a very loose thumbnail, because I liked it a lot better than the pencils I was working on (more energy) from that thumbnail. Which I promptly abandoned about 1/3rd of the way through. Conversely, Marilith was done from pretty tight pencils on bristol. Both times I did sorta digital underpaintings with a tone layed down, punching the blacks up a bit and then going in with white to pick out highlights.

I purchased today at the Standard Art Supply in Ithaca, NY, a new white pencil. It is a big, huge, thick white pencil that I hope doesn't break like my prismacolor white pencils always do INSIDE the pencil part. A tip breaking is fine, I can resharpen, but I hate when a color pencil breaks multiple times inside the wood and the lead starts falling out. Grrr.

So this was a quickie little sketch that I did at a coffee shop. I liked it, so I scanned it in and posted it for funnsies... not finished artwork by any stretch. The new pencil, by the way, is for Lyra, called, appropriately, "Color-Giants" and made in Germany. While I had a pencil sharpener, it is too fat for it and I didn't have my usual pen knife, so a bit awkward and clumsy for detail work...but I liked the feel for it. Hope when sharpened by a knife, get a bit more of a point to work with. At the moment, it is bit more like a crayon. But I like the solidity and feel of the pencil. The tip might break, but the lead won't break inside the wood due to any kind of normal wear and tear.

Hello all. I've been away from the ATT for a while, but I logged in to post the piece of art I just had Storn do for me. It's another picture of Zalman from the Project Freedom game in the game room forum.

Their shoulders held the sky suspended;
They stood, and earth's foundations stay;
What God abandoned, these defended,
And saved the sum of things for pay.
-A.E. Housman

Jeff Wilder wrote:I continue to love your Arion, Mage of Atlantis-style magical sigils, Storn. One of these days I need to play a mage so I can commission one of those.

The face of the female sorcerer, in particular, is one of the more expressive I've seen from you in a while. I can't quite put my finger of why, but it just seems particularly "living."

cool!

Here is some work I did awhile ago, but got permission to post. It is for a virtual card game for facebook, and the working title is Phaeton. I don't know how far along it is, or quite how it is played. But the core concept is based around some kind of school for teen supers, ala X-mansion.

My friend Steve Ellis was lead artist and art director on this one, and it was both fun and tough to work with the constraints and character concepts he had set up. Tough in that we have very different ways of working, especially when it comes to inking. So, I was trying to come close to his inking style. But that was fun too, because it pushed and prodded me to really think about how I do things and I learned a lot.

Well, in this case, Devil is coming out of the arch way. Here is a commission done for my awesome patron, Paul C. This one was a lot of fun to do, especially while watching my beloved Packers beat the Ravens yesterday. (I have two monitors, so I can watch stuff while I work). But I did the finishes this morning, early afternoon.

I had the layout in my head before starting the painting. I pencilled both the demon and Dana there on separate paper, scanned them in, created the cathedral and statuary in Manga Studio 5, combined it all in Photoshop and then did a semi-sorta digital underpainting.

I have not released a lot of the Paul C commissions as LPJ Design Portfolios because the time that goes into them, I don’t want to release them at the price point those portfolios go for. So. If anyone needs some 2nd use printing rights for covers or what have you, these paintings will go for a lot less than 1st use artwork. And I will make some extra monies that is more reasonably compensation.

I painted on Saturday. That is not particularly unusual for me. What was unusual was that it was on my friend Pete’s face. I’ve done a couple of wounds for my wife, when she does roleplaying scenarios for nursing students. My wife is a professor of nursing and recently, she “played” a patient who had fallen and had a huge gash on her leg, bleeding. The students have to access and figure out what to do. It is startlingly real for 1st semester students and they get all kinds of flustered.

So. I’ve had some experience doing blood trails, wounds and puss with cheap make up. But Pete, who is a drummer in the heavy-metal Ire Clad, was doing a gig at the Haunt, here in Ithaca, on Saturday as a zombie. Pigment is pigment, hopefully, I could pull this off. So, here is my very first horror make up job. This is all brushed on. No cool airbrushes like on Face Off. Pete did the clothes with a belt sander for the distressing and watered acrylic through a spray bottle for the blood. I think his clothes came out better than the make up. But it was a ton of fun to do.

Also, unrelated, I needed to do a warm up the other day, so I decided to do the Ten Ton Studio’s sketch challenge. Which is DC comics’ Mad Dog. Come on by the Mad Dog sketch challenge thread and check ‘em out. You can vote on them too. So, if you like one sketch in particular, please vote, you do not have to belong to Ten Ton Studios to do so. Voting starts tomorrow (Wednesday).